Survey: iPhone 6 powers an increase in enterprise adoption of iOS

Apple's iOS mobile platform gained user share in security-conscious businesses late in 2014, taking it away from Google's Android platform, thanks to the introduction of the iPhone 6 smartphone, according to a survey of its enterprise customers by mobile security vendor Good Technology.

Good's customers increased their activation of iOS devices -- meaning enrollment in the Good movie management server -- to 73 percent; iOS devices accounted for 69 percent of activations in the previous quarter. Over the same period, Android activations declined from 29 percent to to 25 percent.

Good's customers tend to be enterprises that have high security requirements, and thus have invested in a mobile management server. Good's data may or may not reflect mobile usage as a whole across all companies, and Good's server doesn't manage BlackBerry devices, so its data doesn't account for BlackBerry usage.

For the Android smartphones managed by Good, Samsung products accounted for nine of the 10 most popular models. And despite the public fascination with "phablet" smartphones like the Samsung Galaxy Note 4 and Apple iPhone 6 Plus, Good's customers preferred smaller devices. The iPhone 6 was the most activated smartphone in the latest survey, accounting for 30 percent of all new activations. Of the Android devices, the Samsung S4 Mini topped the list.

In regulated industries, iOS's share of usage among Good's customers was even higher: 95 percent of activations in the legal field, 82 percent in the public sector, and 81 percent in financial services. Android saw the highest adoption levels in low-regulation industries, such as high tech (45 percent), manufacturing (39 percent), and transportation (35 percent).

The survey also found that app adoption increased 65 percent from the previous quarter and more than 300 percent from the same period a year earlier. On tablets, users increasingly are using tools for accessing and editing documents, Good found, while the highest increases in app deployment were in secure browsing, custom business apps, secure messaging, document editing, and document access.

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